


Sondheim's coward

by Terfle



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Musicals, Sapphic Angst Fest, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 09:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13701954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terfle/pseuds/Terfle
Summary: Bernie is out in Kiev, desperately beating herself up for leaving Serena





	Sondheim's coward

**Author's Note:**

> The song is called 'Finale' from the Sondheim musical 'Passion'

Berenice Griselda Wolfe's life was full of mistakes. She was destined to fuck up almost every good thing in her life. Today was the turn of miserably dissecting the remains of a tattered friendship. Relationship. Friendship. Whatever she had with Serena.

Kiev was a pretty place but there was no Serena in it. Bernie passed the time sitting on the roof and rebelliously blasting oddities from her iPod; mainly classical lifesavers and those beloved pop songs of her younger years. Deeply uncool as her son said. She didn't care. She didn't know how to be cool if her life depended on it. Including running away from the one person she was sure she was in love with.

One of her colleagues was even more uncool and had a stack of CDs of musicals. Bernie wasn't one for musicals. All those people wailing about their day in the life and singing their feelings. She could barely voice her feelings out loud, let alone sing about it. She uploaded some of them for a change.

The iPod landed on a song called  _Finale._ Bernie leaned back and closed her eyes to absorb it better. Finale to what, she wondered. She didn't know the story much but there was a military man and an illicit relationship involved. Some adultery somewhere. She couldn't keep count. She snorted. Like she couldn't relate to that. Once it got to Giorgio's part reading the already dead Fosca's letter, Bernie focused. The music was melancholy and beautiful, like a heartbeat.

**_'These past two days since you have left, since we were together, have been a revelation'_ **

It certainly had been.

**_'Now at last I see what comes from feeling loved'_ **

Was she though? Was she a fool to doubt Serena's affections?

 _**'Strange, how merely feeling loved** _  
_**You see things clearly**_  
_**Things I feared** _  
_**Like the world itself'** _

Bernie had to admit that her habit of running away was getting in the way of her life. She was an awful coward. Fosca's rich melancholy voice had really attracted her attention and she clutched the blanket around her as if to get under the character's skin.

 _**'Every moment bursts with feeling** _  
_**Why is love so easy to give**_  
_**And so hard to receive?'** _

She didn't know the answer to that. Nobody did. She always thought she'd given her love but it turned out it was always the other person who had, wholeheartedly. Marcus, Alex, Serena. She'd even messed up AAU's biggest bitch and nobody messed with Serena. And yet she'd made it clear that she would do the unthinkable and fall in love with her, to even endure people's comments just to be with her. That was a big ask and not one that she would do for anyone. And Bernie just tripped head over heels to get away from her.

 **_'But though I want to live_ **  
_**I now can leave**_  
_**With what I never knew'**_

She knew it alright. What a terrible coward she had been.

**_'I'm someone to be loved_ **

**_And that I learned from you'_ **

Sung like a caress into an ear, it was as if Fosca was sitting beside her. Why was she crying? Who cried at a song from a musical? This was ridiculous. But she couldn't stop listening.

 _**'I don't know how I let you** _  
_**So far inside my mind** _  
_**But there you are and there you will stay** _  
_**How could I ever wish you away?'** _

She couldn't wish Serena away, no matter how much she needed to. She didn't want to. She was always on her mind. She hit replay as the song came to a beautiful end and listened over and over again, sobbing into her blanket.

Damn that bloody Sondheim.


End file.
